What, I would ask, are we to do with phenomena such as these? Are we to rest content with that very simple, but at the same time very unsatisfying explanation, that all these insects and other animals were created exactly _as_ they are, and originally placed exactly _where_ they are, by the inscrutable will of their Creator, and that we have nothing to do but to register the facts and wonder? Was this single island selected for a fantastic display of creative power, merely to excite a child-like and unreasoning admiration? Is all this appearance of gradual modification by the action of natural causes—a modification the successive steps of which we can almost trace—all delusive? Is this harmony between the most diverse groups, all presenting analogous phenomena, and indicating a dependence upon physical changes of which we have independent evidence, all false testimony? If I could think so, the study of nature would have lost for me its greatest charm. I should feel as would the geologist, if you could convince him that his interpretation of the earth’s past history was all a delusion—that strata were never formed in the primeval ocean, and that the fossils he so carefully collects and studies are no true record of a former living world, but were all created just as they now are, and in the rocks where he now finds them. I must here express my own belief that none of these phenomena, however apparently isolated pr insignificant, can ever stand alone—that not the wing of a butterfly can change in form, or vary in colour, except in harmony with, and as a part of, the grand march of nature. I believe, therefore, that all the curious phenomena I have just recapitulated are immediately dependent on the last series of changes, organic and inorganic, in these regions; and as the phenomena presented by the island of Celebes differ from those of all the surrounding islands, it can, I conceive, only be because the past history of Celebes has been to some extent unique and different from theirs. We must have much more evidence to determine exactly in what that difference has consisted. At present, I only see my way clear to one deduction, viz., that Celebes represents one of the oldest parts of the archipelago, that it has been formerly more completely isolated both from India and from Australia than it is now, and that, amid all the mutations it has undergone, a relic or substratum of the fauna and flora of some more ancient land has been here preserved to us.